Gravitational wave trispectrum in the axion-SU(2) model

Understand

We study the trispectrum of the gravitational waves (GWs) generated through the dynamics of an axionic spectator field and SU(2) gauge fields during inflation.

• In non-Abelian gauge theory, the gauge fields have four-point self-interactions, which induce the tree-level GW trispectrum.
• We formulate this type of the GW trispectrum including the non-dynamical contributions and evaluate it in the equilateral limit as a unique signal of this model.
• We find that the ratio of the GW trispectrum to the cube of the scalar power spectrum can be as large as $\mathcal{O}(10^6)$ in the viable parameter space, which could be captured in the CMB observations.